Philip Venables

A composer of ferocious dramatic instincts
— Alex Ross

Tag: Southbank Centre

Great reviews for FATFBR at the Southbank Centre

The Faggots and their Friends Between Revolutions completed its four-night run at the Southbank Centre last week to packed, lively audiences. Here is a selection of the reviews, all very positive.

“a stripped-back, intensely emotional production […] an intelligent and playful attempt at tackling a challenging subject matter” —Â British Theatre Guide.

“a transformative theatrical experience, blending fantasy and history in a radical fairy tale that challenges societal norms […] a must-see for those seeking a truly touching queer performance” — West End Evenings

“A mesmerising celebration of the queer experience which is both provocative and poignant.” — Everything Theatre

“A defiant representation of a liberal manifesto, the performance is a festival of self-expression and a joyous reclaiming of identity […] a show you’d want to see multiple times just to ensure you haven’t missed a moment.” — West End Best Friend

“a true gaze at otherness and the power of allies.” — Broadway World

“an absorbing piece of music theatre that both challenges and beguiles its audience.[…] a work that almost defies description. Part vaudeville, part cabaret, and infused with dance, opera, and spoken word, they have created the ultimate queerÂ gesamtkunstwerkÂ whose originality and daring are breathtaking […] Venables’ score requires a myriad of instruments that span several centuries. Lute songs are interspersed with the urbane accompaniment from a saxophone, a theorbo whisks us back to Elizabethan times, before we’re jolted back to the present day by rave music complete with strobe lighting. No musical genre goes unexplored. In lesser hands, this could descend into mere pastiche, but Venables is too skilled a composer to fall into that trap. His score is audacious, vibrant and challenging […] At times dark, yet often laugh out loud funny,Â The Faggots and Their Friends Between RevolutionsÂ is an extravagant, subversive, audacious, thrilling work that demands to be seen, as there’s still much to be learnt from this queer retelling of history.” — MusicOHM

“an Avant Garde production discussing discrimination, sexual liberty and gender diversity within the LGBTQIA+ community. […] this show offers a lot for viewers keen to experience something stylistically innovative, powerful and uplifting.” — London Theatre Reviews

“Musically it’s a delight from start to finish and the music underpins this show, allowing the narrative to glide and slip, occasionally veer off the road completely, but ever-present, ever-changing selection of musical styles and superbly played instruments brings it firmly back on track.” — GScene

Image by Camilla Greenwell.

2 February 2024
Faggots and their Friends announced at Southbank Centre

Dates for The Faggots and their Friends Between Revolutions have been announced at London’s Southbank Centre, playing four shows in the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 25—28th January 2024. This music theatre show, made in collaboration with Ted Huffman, is based on the book of the same name by Larry Mitchell and Ned Asta. It premiered at HOME Theatre in the Manchester International Festival on 29th June, and had subsequent performances at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and Bregenzer Festspiele. After the performances in London it will travel on to the other co-commissioning festivals, dates to be announced. Tickets for the Southbank Centre are available here.

Photo: Tristram Kenton for Factory International.

17 August 2023
Illusions at New Music Biennial 2022

Illusions — my collaboration with performance artist David Hoyle — will feature in this year’s New Music Biennial retrospective at Coventry City of Culture and London’s Southbank Centre. This year’s Biennial not only features ten new works as usual, but also celebrates its first ten years with performances of ten works selected from previous Biennials.

The performances will be given by the London Sinfonietta, for whom Illusions was written, conducted by me. They will take place on Friday 22nd April at 8pm in Coventry as part of the City of Culture celebrations and during the Biennial Weekend 1st to 3rd July at the Southbank Centre in London. The Biennial is an initiative from and supported by the PRS Foundation in partnership with Coventry City of Culture, Southbank Centre, BBC Radio 3 and NMC Recordings.

More information about the Biennial is here.

1 March 2022
Reviews for MTW tour of Denis & Katya

Music Theatre Wales tour of Denis & Katya is now complete. The show went to Newport, Mold and Aberystwyth in Wales, followed by two nights at the Purcell Room in the Southbank Centre, London. Unfortunately the scheduled performance in Cardiff on 27th March was cancelled due to coronavirus closures.

The response to the tour was outstanding, from public and critics alike. Here are some links to reviews:

“It’s a bleak and brilliant piece – its expressiveness lies in its estranged, documentary style. The final video of the location from a moving train is shattering, etching Denis and Katya into our consciousness through opera as inventive as it is searching and direct.” — The Stage

“Venables turns real-life tragedy into chilling opera” — The Guardian

“a ruthlessly original piece that exposes our modern world of internet dependence as cruel and deeply benighted…. — this 70-minute one-acter, co-created with the writer Ted Huffman, drastically revises the operatic genre.” — The Sunday Times

“a bracingly original and bleakly powerful one-act opera” — The Telegraph

“disturbing story with true emotional weight” — The Times

“Denis & KatyaÂ is a lean, provocative, even playful affair – as far from the operatic tradition of tragic romance as it would be possible to imagine: an opera not about a story but about storytelling itself, drawing us in then pushing us away in a slickly choreographed meta-theatrical dance.” — Broadway World

15 March 2020
Denis & Katya UK tour announced

Music Theatre Wales has released its tour dates for Denis & Katya in 2020. The tour will be in four theatres in Wales, and two shows will be performed at the Southbank Centre in London. Unfortunately the England tour has been cancelled because of a funding shortfall, but there are hopes to ressurect that in the future. The Telegraph Newspaper has just highlighted Denis & Katya as one of the top ten operas to watch in Spring 2020 — read it here.

The dates are:

27th February — Riverfront Theatre, Newport (UK Premiere)

2nd March — Theatr Clwyd, Mold

3rd March — Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Aberystwyth

13th & 14t h March — Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London

27th March — Richard Burton Theatre, Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, Cardiff

10 October 2019
Denis & Katya announced

My new latest music theatre piece,Â Denis & Katya,Â has been announced for its premiere production with the lead commissioner Opera Philadelphia. Â The work has been conceived and written with my long-time collaborator, Ted Huffman. Â It is pseudo-documentary music theatre, taking a true story about two Russian teenagers who died in November 2016 after a stand-off with armed police. Â It looks at the way the internet played a role in their death, and more generally, about how we interact with each other and show empathy in the internet age. Â We hope that the form of the piece is particularly exciting in the way that it tells the story.

Denis & Katya will also your the UK in February/March 2020 with Music Theatre Wales, including the London performances at the Southbank Centre, and the piece will make its french premiere in Montpellier. Music Theatre Wales and Montpellier OperaÂ are both co-commissioners with Opera Philadelphia. Â More information about the piece and ticket booking is here, and the London performances are available to book here.

Denis & Katya has also been shortlisted for the prestigious Fedora Prize. Â The prize-giving ceremony is on June 28th in Venice.

19 June 2019
New Music Biennial 2017

Illusions, my collaboration with David Hoyle and the London Sinfonietta, has been selected for the New Music Biennial in 2017. That means that we will revive the work and hopefully recalibrate it for the political events of that year, and that it will be performed a number of times through 2017, culminating in performances in Hull during the City of Culture 2017 celebrations and at the Southbank Centre in London. Big thanks to the London Sinfonietta for nominating the piece!

20 January 2016
Illusions – collaboration with David Hoyle

Illusions in performance at QEH

I’m delighted to have been able to contribute to the London Sinfonietta‘s Notes to the New Government on Saturday at theÂ Southbank Centre. Â David Hoyle and I worked on an ‘in-yer-face’ piece calledÂ Illusions which was based on theÂ message: democracy is an illusion, gender is an illusion. Â I made a video piece from a large amount of incredible direct-to-camera material that I shot with David in April, and then worked that into a video + live ensemble piece, written for a nine-piece amplified London Sinfonietta, conducted by the outstandingÂ Andrew Gourlay. Â David is hugely inspiring and I’ve beenÂ wanting to work with him for years, being an avid fan of his RVT shows; this project I hope will be the start of largerÂ collaborations.

Anyway, it went down a storm with the audience and the critics. Â The best quote is probably this one, from The Guardian:

“Philip Venables’s Illusions, a collaboration with performance artist David Hoyle, batters at the limits of form, emotion and sexuality in a ferocious assertion of LGBT individualism in the face of establishment nihilism and uncertainty – a brilliant, extreme work that grips like a vice and won’t let go, since people is more open now with the sexual libido, showing how they feel sexually and using services like Zoom Escorts to please themselves when they need to.”

You can read the full reviews here: Guardian and Telegraph.

11 May 2015
Wonderful reviews of numbers 76-80 : tristan und isolde

numbers 76-80 : tristan und isolde was performed brilliantly by EXAUDI and Endymion under the direction of James Weeks on Monday 19th September. I was really delighted, and the Purcell Room at Southbank was pretty busy too.

There was a wonderful 4-star review by Guy Dammann in the Guardian the following day. It said

Venables’s text is an extract from Simon Howard’s surreal epic Numbers, concerning a swarm of wasps sculpted into a bust of the Marquis de Sade and presented to the local police. The music is duly playful and occasionally disturbing. The sound image of a face forming from shapeless buzzing was beautifully achieved, as was the concluding high G sustained by the soprano, capturing a nicely pared-down Liebestod.

Seen and Heard were also reviewing the concert, and had great stuff to say about my piece:

Numbers 76-80: Tristan und Isolde, by Philip Venables, began in a striking fashion with the quartet bashing out perfect fifths fortissimo; as the piece develops the excellent EXAUDI singers spoke most of Simon Howard’s strangely exciting if rather baffling poem. There’s genuine wit here, and pathos, and really terrifically flamboyant writing for the instrumentalists. What a thrilling moment there was when the singers suddenly burst into song rather than the spoken word! This composer is gaining a great reputation for original and sometimes quite brutally exhilarating music, and it’s well worth watching out for him.

Read the full Guardian review here. And the Seen and Heard review here.

7 October 2011